It was a proud moment for the Bandipora district administration, in fact the whole of Jammu & Kashmir, when their ‘Panchayat Development Index’ was showcased at the Digital India Week 2022 held at Gandhinagar in Gujarat, the inaugural session of which was presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
So, what is this ‘Panchayat Development Index’ all about? It is an e-governance initiative of ranking panchayats on the basis of their performances on the basis of 81 indicators in six different fields, an unique initiative of the Bandipora administration to boost the development of all panchayats in the district from the grassroot level.
Indian Masterminds interacted with 2014-batch IAS officer Owais Ahmed, the Deputy Commissioner of Bandipora, under whose leadership the district administration was able to showcase their ‘Panchayat Development Index’ to the rest of the country, and got more details out of him about this innovative initiative.
UNIQUE INDEX
Because of the Panchayat Development Index, the public can now have a social audit on a periodical basis and this is bringing about a revolutionary change and transformation in the panchayats by playing a key role in bridging the developmental deficit of an area. Like the ‘Human Development Index’, with whom we all are familiar with, this index assigns more weight to social parameters rather than the infrastructure.
Mr. Ahmed said that the Panchayat Development Index (PDI) developed by the Bandipora administration also got the National E-Governance Award in Silver Category. The index, which was started a year back, works on the basis of 81 indicators in 6 fields.
“Considering these parameters as the basis, we do the ranking of the panchayats. From this, we get to know how a particular panchayat is performing in fields like health, education, development, etc. Then we try to find out what are the things that went into making a panchayat number 1 and what are the reasons that others are lagging behind,” he explained.
The index also includes small parameters like institutional delivery, school dropout, etc., whereby it is seen whether deliveries are mostly taking place in government hospitals or outside. Similarly, the number of school dropouts in the education sector is taken into consideration and the reasons looked into. The panchayats are then ranked on the basis of the overall rankings in the various parameters.
TRANSFORMING PANCHAYATS
It took collective efforts of one year by the district administration, 22 government departments and PRIs as stakeholders to bring out this index model. The index is largely inspired by the Human Development Index, Sustainable Development Goals and Niti Ayog Aspirational Programme. The striking features include real time monitoring and ranking of panchayats to provide evidence-based governance. The index has helped in making development a mass movement besides creating a data warehouse at the panchayat level, which was not available earlier. It has further expanded scope of research in distinct areas of interest. It further helps to identify the strength of each panchayat to act as a catalyst for development.
The index is a combination of statistics and information technology to achieve e-governance and subsequently better governance goals. It helps in speedier transformation of villages/panchayats through continuous intervention on outcome parameters of development. As of now, the Panchayat Development Index is spread over 6 thematic areas – Health & Nutrition, Education, Agriculture, Allied Skill Development & Self Employment, Financial Inclusion and Basic Infrastructure.
POSITIVE IMPACT
On the impact of this initiative in Bandipora district, Mr. Ahmed said that so far the results have been very positive. Competition among panchayats has increased, so work is also getting better, the sarpanches and PRIs feel empowered as they now know what to monitor in which panchayat, where to pay more attention, and how much work is needed on a particular thing, etc. At the same time, the administration also gets to know about the problems in different panchayatsand, hence, can address them on time. As for the general public, they can access all these rankings online and the people of the panchayat who performs well in this index take pride in it while the panchayat which is lagging behind tries its best to improve to come up at par.
“If you want to go by technical terms, then, the index has infused fresh energy in government officers and officials to work in coordination. It has further helped the administration/PRIs to identify weak areas with ease to work towards their progressive upliftment on periodic basis,” the officer said.
He further added that the district is achieving targets of saturation faster nowadays and gave examples of how 90% of schools of the district has now clean drinking water and washrooms, and smart class rooms. There has been reduction in the dropout rate and improvement in the female literacy rate. Outlining the improvements in the health sector, he said that there has been marked reduction in malnourishment in children, improved rate of universal immunization in each panchayat, improvement in sex ratio at birth, and NHM programme is being implemented and monitored in a much better way.
SHOWCASED AT DIGITAL INDIA WEEK 2022
Speaking about the index being showcased in the Digital India Week 2022 at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, where PM Narendra Modi also visited, Mr. Ahmed expressed satisfaction at getting such a big platform. “I felt that it is a big deal to have our district level stall engaged in such a big event. However, we now want the real purpose behind the development of the index to be fulfilled and all panchayats need to put in a lot of effort. In the coming days, we hope to make it even better. This will be our constant endeavour.”
